By Erin O’Donnell
Growing up in Manitowoc, a town of less than 35,000, Tou Jim Lee often dreamed of something bigger. He chose to attend UW-Milwaukee, hoping that a large, urban university would provide more opportunities than a smaller school.
Lee’s parents are Hmong refugees, and as their oldest son and the first person in their family to attend college, Lee was extra motivated. “I had to be the big brother and pave the way for my siblings,” he said.
One of his goals was to be featured on the cover of Forbes magazine someday, celebrated for his success in business. He entered the Lubar College of Business as a marketing major in fall 2014 and quickly joined multiple student groups, including the Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization, or CEO Club.
“Every opportunity I had, I took advantage of it,” he said.
For example, he was selected to participate in an international program known as University Innovation Fellows, which involved traveling to Stanford University to network with other entrepreneurship-minded students. He also joined student government and completed a study abroad in the United Kingdom.
UWM’s Student Success Center helped connect Lee with an internship with Manpower, working with its North America and global marketing teams. Later he took an internship with the Hmong Wisconsin Chamber of Commerce, a tiny nonprofit on Milwaukee’s west side, to help develop the chamber’s marketing and website. After graduating from UWM, he continued to work for the chamber.
“Ten years later, I’m still here,” said Lee, who is currently director of operations and communications. He uses the entrepreneurship and critical thinking skills he gained at UWM daily; the chamber is now “a multimillion-dollar nonprofit, with five offices across the state,” he said.
His favorite parts of the job include getting to know people in his community who want to open a new business or grow an existing one, and providing free business consultations and the business loan program, “to help them avoid loan sharks when looking for funding.”
He also established Our Scholarship, a grassroots effort that has to date awarded $19,000 in scholarships to Southeast Asian students in Wisconsin who are headed to college.
And Lee owns a small boba tea business called Nova Boba, named for Nova, the cat he and his wife adopted from the Wisconsin Humane Society. They often sell their tea and other beverages at festivals and farmers markets, where Lee loves introducing people to boba tea, a fun drink that originated in Taiwan.
He hasn’t appeared on the cover of Forbes, but Lee says that serving as a leader in the Hmong and Asian American and Pacific Islander communities has been more rewarding than his teenage self could have imagined.
“I feel really lucky that I’m in a space where I can advocate for and support people that look like me, to give them a voice and help them chase their dreams,” he said.